


when the dead learn to live

by orphan_account



Category: Naruto, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bakugou Katsuki is a Good Friend, Emotions, F/M, Friendship, Good Parent Midoriya Inko, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Beta Read, Parental Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Romance is not a central theme, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24447751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Uchiha Izuna is dead.Except now he’s not, and things are far different to what he knows.Lost in a world that barely compares to that he once lived in, there’s no way Izuna can allow himself to die again.It’s time for a dead man to learn how to live.(Somewhere, in the void, Midoriya Izuku drifts away from this world.)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	when the dead learn to live

The first thing that Izuna thinks when he wakes up is:

_‘I’m dead.’_

He can recall dying in an almost uncanny amount of detail, can almost see every single second leading up to his death. He can feel the pain in his eyes as they are physically pulled out by his brother.

It scares him, this remembrance, and it’s a few seconds before he continues to have cohesive thought, his mind too silent for its own good.

_‘Is this… Some kind of afterlife?’_

He wants to believe that. He really does. He wants to believe that he’s dead and gone and he won’t have to bother with pain or war or hurt anymore.

Uchiha Izuna wants nothing more than to drown in the blackness of this notion of an afterlife. He wants to hide from his past, hide from his sins, hide from everything he’s ever known and forget it all. He wants to substitute his life -his death, he reminds himself- for the darkness that surrounds him.

He wants this. He wants to believe that it’s all over. He can remember dying, so he knows that he must be dead, that he must be finished with his cursed existence. Even though he knows, in his heart of hearts, that there’s no way that death could be so simple, he still convinced himself to believe.

Slowly, he shifts, unable to do anything in the blackness that suffocates him. To waste time, Izuna begins to think back on his life, what he’d have to done wrong, what he’d have changed.

He should’ve dodged Tobirama’s technique. He knows this. There was an opening that he could’ve exploited if not for the betrayed look in Madara’s eyes that had grown into screams of dissent as the battle began.

Izuna realises, with shocking clarity, that perhaps the reason he’s dead is that he simply cares all too much. He doesn’t really care. Madara survived and recieved the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan. The Uchiha clan will be safe. He’s done his duty, and now he’s dead with little to no regret.

It’s only after a while that Izuna wonders if there’s any way to find something else in the blackness that is this deathly void. He shifts and turns and yet cannot see anything spare for the same black, over and over again.

It feels almost insane to try, but Izuna considers the possibility that he has his eyes closed, and when he reaches up to feel them, they are.

It’s perhaps even more of a shock to him that he even has eyes.

With sudden resolve, Izuna opens his eyes, expecting to see the red light of Hell greeting him.

But then Izuna opens his eyes to the light of day and a ceiling and walls plastered with posters.

Izuna opens his eyes, and wakes up.

And his world falls apart all over again.

————————————————————————————————————————

Izuna refuses to move a muscle. And he does have muscle, this is a fact that he’s painfully aware of, but the muscle he does have is too little, worryingly little. It makes no sense to Izuna, who’s made sure to keep in shape every moment of his life since early childhood. His body is weak, too weak to be his own.

He can feel thick child’s fat covering his face and body, over the top of barely-trained muscle. He perhaps has the physique of a civilian child. Terror has perhaps frozen his body far more than he cares to admit, and so he once again convinces himself that he’s still in control of his actions.

And so Izuna refuses to move a muscle, allowing a cold bead of sweat of form on his forehead and drip down, condensing on his lip before falling into his mouth. It’s salty and disgusting, and Izuna has finally realised that he’s not dead, and this is very much a living body he’s laying in.

Fear overtaking his actions, Izuna forces his eyes open once more, sitting up and looking around in frantic desperation. Once again, light fills unused eyes, and he has to blink a few times before he can make anything out other than foggy shapes

He feels a rush of excitement running along the terror, at the sudden clarity to his sight. He’s grown so used to slowly degrading eyesight that seeing in full HD is something he can barely remember from his childhood.

He’s inside a room, walls plastered with posters, floor covered in books and rubbish. None of them resemble the things he recognises, and he looks down at himself, running his hands over his body, examining this foreign landscape.

It’s as he fears, and Izuna pales as he finally comes to a cold feeling of acceptance. This isn’t his body. This isn’t the body that he’s trained in and this isn’t the same body that he uses for fighting battles and wars and mere skirmishes and scoldings and the conflicts that come with his occupation and this isn’t the body that has grown with him and changed and this body doesn’t bare his scars and the marks that make up his life and this isn’t the body that he used to fight in the war- this isn’t the body he died in- and Izuna is scared because this body isn’t him.

Slowly, Izuna holds out a hand. It’s smaller than he’s used to, unfamiliar and wrong. He puts it in front of his face, turning it over and clenching it into a fist. It’s so strange to see this hand which is not his performing actions which Izuna commands it to. His immediate reaction is to stab it, as he would any other unfamiliar hand coming up in front of his face.

Izuna sighs.

It’ll take time to get used to seeing this body whenever he moves. Time that he’s not even sure he has. Izuna died, he’s sure of that. He distinctly remembers being killed. His memories are relatively clear, spare for minor things from his younger years, and his death is fresh in his mind.

Izuna doesn’t want to recall that, though. Recalling his death will only serve to make him fearful of dying again, and fear makes him weak. Shinobi of the Uchiha clan are not weak.

Izuna finally musters up the courage to slide his leg over the bed. It’s short, too short to be Izuna’s own leg, and this seals the idea of a different body that he’s convinced of. Izuna wonders if he’s a child of some sort. He’s not overly young, he can guess that he’s around the age of your average genin, perhaps a year or two older.

Sliding his tongue around his mouth, he can feel a slight amount of baby fat. It makes him want to gag. Sliding a hand up his arm reveals a distinct lack of muscle, a far cry from the body that he’s always kept in peak physical condition.

He can’t say that the body is out of shape- no, it can probably pull off a few low level techniques. It’s clear that whoever used to own this body was trying to get in good shape- even if their efforts weren’t particularly great.

A grimace appears on his lips. So. A child again. Izuna’s childhood wasn’t anywhere near as bad as some, but he still resents the idea of redoing it, let alone redoing it in the wrong body.

He finally stands, testing out his legs and bending them into some general stretches. This body is far too weak for Izuna’s standards. As he stretches out his left leg, he can almost hear the bones creaking to stretch as far as he makes them.

He decides to take a look around the room next, walking around and examining posters. Most are of a large man, wreathed in muscle and wearing an obnoxious coloured outfit. When he’s gathered the gist of the posters, he turns to the floor and begins picking up various books.

_‘Kami help me...’_

Izuna’s never really enjoyed reading as a hobby. But at the very least, he does know how to read- hell, he’s probably read every book in the library at home, more or less. Reading is essential in learning many techniques. However, all these books are in a language that he can’t comprehend. He squints at the squiggles, trying to make something.... anything, out of the text.

Izuna hates this. He really does. He wonders where he must now be- whose life he’s now living. He doesn’t want to be here. Kami, he really does not want to be here. He either wants to be back with Madara again, with the rest of his clan where he belongs.

Or, he thinks, scowling, he wants to be dead. Dead and gone. He doesn’t care much for his life, at this point. He’s died once and he’s fully prepared to stay dead.

And yet instead, he’s standing here, in an unfamiliar room, holding an unreadable book and he’s trapped in a child’s body which doesn’t belong to him.

Izuna has never felt more lost in his life.

————————————————————————————————————————

His name is Midoriya Izuku, he learns, after finally deciphering the name-sign on the door. Or, at least, the person this body belongs to is called that. Hell will freeze _the fuck_ over before Izuna actually uses that cursed name. Midoriya is such a far cry from his real name that it makes him feel sick, but a stretch, he decides, he can tolerate Uchiha Izuku, though that still doesn’t feel right.

He’s an Uchiha, and he always will be. Nothing _(and Izuna means nothing)_ can stop him from being one. Not a different body. Not his lack of sharingan. Not the absence of humming chakra both around and inside him that he’s deliberately ignored this whole time. Nothing.

If he meets others, who know Midoriya, they’ll address him by the name, and Izuna wonders how he’ll get around that. Alone in this room, he can accept that this body has a name- but outside, he doubts anyone will believe him if he tells them that he isn’t, in fact, Midoriya Izuku.

Well, not yet. Izuna isn’t ready to go outside and actually meet people- other people- like him. The likelihood is, they won’t understand the language he speaks, and even then he can’t find a good reason to go out. _‘Not yet,’_ he tells himself. _‘But maybe soon. ‘_

_‘Maybe I can go out and introduce myself as an Uchiha and no-one will look at me like they hate me for my clan’s opposition of the kami-be-damned Senjus and no-one will bat an eyelid and no-one will expect me to be strong.’_

_‘Maybe soon.’_

It’s been a week since he first woke up, and he’s been living off fish from a portable box filled with ice and cans of an unnamed substance. They taste strange on his tongue- like someone set off an explosion jutsu inside his mouth except without the lethality. Izuna, though he’d never admit it, quite likes this substance. It’s one of the only things he likes in this place.

Izuna is a prodigy. He doesn’t want to seem arrogant, but that’s what he is. As a child, he was a fast learner and an even faster doer. The only reason he was able to keep to the same level as his brother was because of his observational skills and his intellect. He’s said it before and he’ll say it again now- he may not be fond of reading, but he’d read everything he could find back in the day, just to be the best. Once he was on top, he’d spar with Madara till they were equal again.

The only people that ever managed to beat him in his prime were his brother and that fucking Senju. He’s revered as a strong leader and the strongest Uchiha besides his brother, titles that he’s built up through training and utilisation of knowledge. Izuna knows he’s a smart guy. He knows it, and it’s this information that he uses to his advantage when looking over what he finds in this house he’s woken up in.

The house is filled with strange things that Izuna just can’t understand. If he didn’t know any better he’d say that they’re operated by some sort of unknown jutsu, but Izuma can’t sense any chakra- hasn’t sensed any chakra since waking up, and when he takes a further look at these… things, he’s sure that they have nothing to do with his old life.

There’s no one conclusion that he can come up with, looking at the black box that displays moving images and the container carrying the temperature of Yuigakure inside of it. There’s a thinnish metal box thing, too, that opens with a hinge and if you press small rectangular buttons on one side of the inside, things flash up on a screen on the other.

Izuna is fixated.

In his second week, he sets to figuring out exactly how these things work, what they’re called and how he can use them. He finds a book on a shelf of the bookcase in the living room explaining the concept of ‘science’. He spends the next few days attempting to translate it with his (admittedly poor) understanding of this language called Japanese.

He discovers electricity and technology and astronomy and a whole world that he’s never even considered the existence of. It’s a reason to continue going in this world, and amidst thoughts of just dying and being done with this new life, it’s a blessing.

Izuna continues investigating science until he understands how to operate the black box that displays moving pictures. (He understands now that this is called a television.) When he switches it on, he has to turn on the subtitles before he can understand what they’re saying. The language is fast and sharp and so- so- different from his own language, a language spoke so widely that it had no need for a name.

Izuna feels a pang of homesickness. He wants to go back home. Back to the Uchiha camp. Hell, he’ll even go to the heart of the hidden leaf settlement itself, for all he hates its residents for the blatant preference of the Senju over the Uchiha. Anything for something new, something familiar.

He pushes these thoughts to the back of his head and focuses on reading the subtitles displayed on the bright screen. It’s some sort of report, he realises, like the reports he used to give and now gets given by members of his clan.

Or rather, used to get given, he has to remind himself, choking back a sob.

As he reads the subtitles, he repeats what is said in soft whispers. It’s strange to hear his voice after so long a time of misuse, and he ignores the unfamiliarity of the soft intoning and slight stutter. He tries to compensate but he can’t.

This voice doesn’t belong to him. This is the voice of a teenager yet to go through puberty. He’s a grown-ass man, for Kami’s sake! He sticks to just deepening his voice the best he can and continues. If he wants to survive in this world, he has to deal with this. He has to.

As much as Izuna hates it, he’s gotten a second chance in a new world full of possibilities. And he won’t fuck it up. Not this time. He’ll get through this, for his honour, for Madara and for the Uchiha clan.

Uchiha Izuna will live.

————————————————————————————————————————

It’s three weeks in when Izuna finds the notebooks. Thirteen of them, filled with a child’s handwriting, in this language which he has learnt but still feels strange on his tongue, and doodles of people, and places, neither of which he recognises, and in the final one, a double-page spread with a signature in yet another language he doesn’t understand.

From how it looks, it’s not a language from this land called Japan, or even ‘Asia’, which Japan seems to be a part of. Most languages use strange, different lettering systems, as compared to the other countries whom seem to use the same. Izuna doesn’t understand this language, so he plans to learn it when he next has free time.

When he begins to read the notebooks, that’s when he begins to understand. These journals are the medium for which the boy has recorded his life. This boy, Midoriya Izuku (Him? No. It’s not him. It can’t be him. He’s Uchiha Izuna.) has left details of every encounter with every hero he’s ever made. Every strength, every weakness. Every flaw and every aspect of every personality. The more he reads, the more he learns.

 _Hero analysis for the future_ , the boy’s called the books.

This Midoriya Izuku could have been a great man. Not great in the way that he and his brother had been great, but if Izuku _(and he guesses that he can call the boy Izuku, they’re certainly familiar, seeing as he is the boy himself)_ had been born in another time, in another world, he could have been the greatest analyst to ever exist. The boy’s mind is simply amazing.

Izuna wonders if this feeling he gets, reading the final notebook, is the same that his tutors had when reading his own work. The feeling that his parents had felt deep inside when he and Madara had sparred repetitively for days, only for it to end in a constant flurry of equal draws.

He wonders if this is what it’s like to take on an apprentice. He was supposed to begin teaching when all this ended. Izuna had planned to retire after the war and teach the young kids of the Uchiha clan how to utilise their chakra and save people and do all the things that he could have done had he not been scared and weak.

The fact that Izuna will never be able to do this, and that he is Izuku, and not the boy’s tutor remains unspoken.

Not that the Uchiha prodigy speaks much nowadays anyway. There’s no-one to speak to, and he’s not ready to leave the safety of this house yet.

————————————————————————————————————————

He’s cleaning up the kitchen, half-heartedly humming a lullaby that his mother had sang to him the night before she died. It’s tinged with sadness and sorrow and tales of a life that could have been but wasn’t and yet he feels like he needs to find some way to honour her in death. He’s set up an altar in the bedroom that now looks more like an office than anything, but it doesn’t work. It’s unpersonal and cold. Even with the drawings that Izuku’s hands were somehow able to create, it doesn’t feel like an altar. It feels like a piece of stone and drawings drawn by someone else. Izuna hates that. All he wants is to go back, and yet he knows, deep in his heart, that it’s impossible. He can either live as Izuku Midoriya or die as Izuku Midoriya. He had his chance as Uchiha Izuna, and he _fucked_ it.

Anger overtaking him, he brings his broom in one long sweep, and a small piece of folded paper is brushed out from under the fridge. Ignoring it, for the time being, Izuna continues to sweep up the floor until he can see the reflection of Izuku’s face, green hair growing long and unruly, dark green eyes narrowed.

Only then does he lean the thin piece of wood against the counter and stoop to pick up the paper.

Izuna is half-expecting it to be in yet another language he doesn’t understand, knowing his luck. The signature he found in Izuku’s thirteenth notebook is in English, a language that Izuna managed to find a dictionary for wedged next to an atlas that helps him get his bearings as to where the hell he is in this new world. The bookcase in the main room is turning out to be a treasure-trove of sots, for someone like himself.

To his surprise, the note is in simple Japanese, and it only takes him a few moments to translate the writing scrawled on it into his traditional tongue. He’s been getting better at reading Japanese. He started reading an actual novel a few days ago.

Izuna would be proud of himself if he were not an Uchiha. The nin of the Uchiha clan are not proud for themselves, they are proud for their clan, and all Izuna wants is to share his success with his family, but they’re as good as dead, literal worlds away from where Midoriya Izuku’s body stands.

Izuna shakes his head to relieve himself before he falls into the dark pit of regret once more, and focuses on the note, raising an eyebrow in startled disbelief as he reads through its contents for the first time properly.

Dearest Izuku,

I know you’re upset about it, but I left last evening. I really have to do this, you know, and I’m sure that you can contact Toshinori-Sensei if you need anything. I’ve left fish in the freezer and I’m pretty sure there’s a twelve-pack of coke in the fridge if you want to treat yourself. Remember, don’t drink too much soda, you’ll go on a sugar high again!!

Anyway, I’m super sorry I had to leave you like this, but you’re 15 now- you can take care of yourself for a month! I’ll be back on the 27th, don’t you dare get into trouble young man!!

Mitsuki is always next door if you need her, and you have Toshinori-Sensei’s number.

Take care, I love you!!,

Kaa-Chan

Izuna drops the note and leans back onto the counter to stop himself from stumbling. He should’ve realised that Izuku would have some sort of family. Perhaps he was too used to living on his own. Perhaps he had gotten too used to his own mother’s death. Perhaps he had been subconsciously wishing that he wouldn’t have to deal with Izuku’s family so soon after he had lost his own.

Soon after the realisation comes another wrecking ball. All Might. The signature he’d found in Izuku’s thirteenth notebook of hero analysis. Kami-fucking-damnit.

He recalls the part about All Might himself. His real name was Toshinori Yagi -Toshinori-Sensei, of course- and his quirk was hereditary. A hereditary quirk. A hereditary. Fucking. Quirk. It was all clear now. Perhaps too clear.

Izuna knew now. He wasn’t an idiot. He’d figured it out.

Midoriya Izuku is All Might’s successor, the prodigy of The Symbol of Peace. And, by extension, that means that Izuna is now…

Izuna can’t step backwards -he’s already leaning on the counter- so he steps forward himself and clenches his hand, dropping the crumpled-up ball of paper.

So, he has a Symbol of Peace, a mother and a new world sporting a new set of languages only one of which does he hardly even fucking understand. He wants to scream, curse at the word, but this world doesn’t speak his language, and he doesn’t know any good cusses in Japanese, or English, or Mandarin or any of the hundreds of languages that he doesn’t understand.

He wants to kill the person who put him here, but all he has is a weak body and no chakra and no sharingan and no Madara to fight alongside him. He ha nothing and no-one and no way to escape this bar death.

Death is terrifying. Death hurts and death is the worst thing that ever happened to him. The only things that Izuna truly fears are the Senju clam and death. The wholeass _fucking_ Senju clan are gone now -this is one of the very few things he enjoys about his new life- so there’s only one more thing left to fear.

The only way to escape life is death, and Uchiha Izuna refuses to die again. He’s scared and he’s lost and now Izuna has nowhere left to run but Izuku’s life.

Izuna hates feeling scared. He hates fear and he hates death. But most of all, he hates Midoriya Izuku.

————————————————————————————————————————

Izuna is sitting in his bedroom-office-training room amalgamation, sharpening yet another blade into a new shape, one reminiscent of the kunai. The doorbell rings and Izuna’s head whips up. His green hair is long and tied back, his hands covered in the cuts and bruises from attempting to relearn the hand-signs and blade tricks that he’d committed to memory in his previous life.

He still hasn’t fully confronted the fact that he no longer has chakra, choosing to place his hope in the fact that perhaps All Might’s quirk will help him in re-access his previous power- or his chakra will just come back of its own volition. He relearns the hand-signs in desperate hope, even though he knows full well that he won’t ever use them again.

Checking the door camera, Izuna’s eyes widen when he sees the plump woman with hair the same shade of green as Izuku’s- as his own.

_She’s home. Midoriya Inko is home._

He panics, scattering pages of Izuku’s thirteenth notebook, painstakingly translated into the word of his own language.

He tests out one of the Japanese curses on his tongue, testing how it feels. His own voice is so strange to him, so soft and high. He says it again, this time issuing more anger into his voice, but he still can’t hear anything of himself.

He found a collection of old videos on Izuku’s laptop, so he knows how to copy the boy’s speech pattern, more or less. He wears the same outfits as Midoriya, mainly due to his limited wardrobe. He can imitate Midoriya Izuku fine- that’s no problem, and he ha no need to be worried about being discovered.

It’s more the idea of meeting Midoriya Inko that he’s unsettled by the prospect of.

He locks his bedroom door behind him before heading downstairs.

Izuna is not excited to meet Izuku’s mother.

————————————————————————————————————————

Midoriya Inko holds him and hugs him and whispers her sorries to the son she left with barely a warning.

Izuna doesn’t want to tell Inko that he’s not her son. He can tell that she needs the emotional comfort of a warm embrace far more than he does.

Inko tells him that she loves him, and Izuna replies in kind. He doesn’t let her know that he doesn’t even know her, doesn’t care whatsoever, spare for the pang in his heart when he realises that Inko reminds him of his Auntie.

Izuna hates this woman, hugging him and making him recall memories he’s tried to bury for years. All he wants is to run, but this embrace is that of family, and family is all that he’s ever known. All that he has ever fought for.

Izuna was known to be the most loyal member of his clan for a reason.

He hugs Midoriya Inko and murmurs his thanks into her back. She smells of home-cooking and mothers and love.

Izuna misses his mother, and his father, and his aunt and uncle, but perhaps most of all, Uchiha Izuna misses his clan.

So he hugs back, and then pretends, just for a second, that Midoriya’s hair is blue-black and her eyes dark. He pretends that there’s chakra, swirling around them in reds and yellows, and lighting up the empty space in his heart.

All Izuna wants is his home back.

Is that really so difficult?

————————————————————————————————————————

Izuna feels empty.

Not the sort of empty that comes with sadness, or the sort of empty that means you’re simply succumbing to boredom, but really, truly, _empty_.

He can’t feel a thing. He’s almost observing himself from a distance as he numbly goes about his day.

Izuna knows that this means he isn’t mentally okay. But he’s never let the notion of insanity stop him before.

He allows the emptiness to consume him, and in turn he does nothing but allow the world to continue moving around him.

He’s not sure how long he’s been suspended in this void of emotion before he’s brought to his senses by a familiar voice.

“Izuna-Nii! Wake up, you idiot!”

The voice grates on his nerves and he’s tempted to tell the owner of the voice to shut up and leave him alone, so he can dwell in this numb stasis for all of eternity.

 _”If you turn away now, you’ll never return,’”_ says the voice in his head.

He knows this. He knows that if he slips off the edge of the void and into the pit itself, he’ll lose his sense of self, lose his mind, and lose everything he’s built up until now.

 _”You shouldn’t do this,”_ the voice tells him, intonation neutral and unimpressive.

Izuna wonders if the voice is his subconscious, or simply just another worthless facet of his mind.

He’s tempted to let go of his grip on reality and slide down into the depths of himself.

He’s been handling life just fine whilst confined in here, he knows this, he can see everything that happens on the outside relatively clearly.

_“Wake up before you ruin yourself.”_

Izuna can’t be bothered to listen to the voice anymore. He tunes it out and descends further into the pool of his own self.

“IZUNA-NII!”

_...eh?_

Who is that? He knows the voice well, each syllable of its speech burning into his memory, yet he can’t recall its owner.

“UCHIHA IZUNA! WAKE UP!”

_‘But... I don’t want to.’_

He slowly resurfaces, apathy beginning to be filled by confusion. What’s he doing? Why is he here? What’s going on?

The voice in his head is still there, screeching at him just as loud as the one from outside, and Izuna finally realises that they’re the same voice.

“Izuna-Nii. You need to wake up. _NOW_.”

Izuna’s eyes fly open, and he goes straight for his katana, or a kunai, and when he can’t find those, he twists his hands straight into the signs he needs for a Gōkakyū no Jutsu.

_Snake to Ram, Ram to Monkey, Monkey to Boar, Boar to Horse, Horse to Tiger._

He mastered the Uchiha clan jutsu techniques at such a young age that they’ve become second nature for him to use.

When the jutsu doesn’t complete, he panics, and re-signs it, kneading all his chakra into the technique.

It’s only then that he realises that he’s alone.

No outside voice, no enemies.

No chakra.

He knows now, he knows that voice. He knows who it belongs to, and the shame he feels at forgetting it is perhaps more than the pain of realisation.

_‘Madara’_

From downstairs, he hears Midoriya Inko’s worries shout, and then the footsteps as the woman rushes up the stairs to confront the man that she believes is her son.

Izuna falls back onto the bed, hands grasping at nothing, impossibly green eyes unseeing.

_‘Madara.’_

Midoriya enters the room, rushing over to him and engulfing him into a meaningless hug.

She’s so worried for him, and Izuna feels guilty that she still believes that he is her son.

 _‘Madara, why?’_ he asks, staring at nothing, _‘Why do I need to wake up?’_

Izuku’s mother pushes Izuna’s head into her shoulder, and he registers that he’s crying for the first time in a decade.

_‘Please, Madara. Come back. I have- I have so many questions.’_

As Midoriya holds him close, Izuna gingerly puts his arms around her and allows himself to sob into the crook of the woman’s neck.

She only smiles, and puts her hands on his shoulders, looking straight at him.

“Don’t worry. You’re so, so brave, and strong. I’m proud of you.”

He feels as if she’s staring at his very soul, talking to _him_ , not Izuku, and he slowly nods, choking back another sob.

“I-I’m sorry.”

Midoriya wipes the tears from his cheeks and puts him back to bed without a word.

_“I’m sorry too.”_

Izuna allows the voice of his brother in his head to embrace him.

Outside the bedroom door, Midoriya Inko casts a final glance at him before switching the light off and softly closing the door.

**Author's Note:**

> TERMINOLOGY:  
> Kami: God  
> Gōkakyū no Jutsu: Great fireball technique  
> I’ve been a fan of Naruto since I was a child, and a fan of BnHA for most of my recent years. My favourite types of fan fictions have always been those where a character from one fandom is thrown into another (hence my other posted fanfiction- which will be updated... At some point).  
> While he isn’t anywhere near as well known as most, my favourite Naruto character is Uchiha Izuna, and over the years, I’ve built up an extensive collection of Izuna-centric fanfics.  
> My Izuna is fiercely loyal to his clan (perhaps to the point of insanity), and holds grudges that even he knows he can’t pay to keep. I try to keep his character in line with his canon personality, whilst amplifying the t ta it’s of his which stand out to me the most.  
> Izuna never really got much of a chance to shine in the original Naruto manga, and I hope to change that by creating a place for him in my own fanfiction.  
> In a way, Izuna matters more to me than many of my own original characters, if only because I seem to be one of the few people who remembers his existence, and even then one of the few people who actually cares about this.  
> Thanks for reading this first chapter- I promise the next will be more angsty, and with 100% more Yuuei in it.  
> -  
> While you’re here, why not check out my Twitter here: https://twitter.com/soukokuiscanon ?


End file.
